I never said that the football culture was the sole reason for crashing out. But IMHO it definitely plays its part, are you saying that fan support and stadium atmosphere are completely unrelated to results on the pitch? Compared to other countries, the JNT get immortalised for good results but get off pretty easy for poor showings. Maybe they'll show a few shots of players crying, but the fallout is nothing brutal and there aren't too many mainstream Japanese commentators willing to be critical. Having a stadium packed with bandwagon fans and geinoujins will do nothing in hardening up the mentality of these guys when it comes to the WC.
Alleluia for a country that understands that when there is winners, there is automatically losers. Better that than the crucifix, its just football. The players are mature enough to feel the deception and the miserability by themselves without having to feel it through fans booing. They are athletes, they hate losing.
Yeh, just getting angry at the players isn't going to make them world-beaters all of a sudden. I think there is a much deeper problem with how they are developed from a younger age. As Honda also stated, they weren't strong enough individually. I'd personally like to see more players going abroad even if its to 2nd/3rd tier leagues. If they work their way up, great, but if not they can go back to the J-league and maybe add some experience there to make the league stronger. I guess currently they don't have enough incentives to do so though.
tell me players who improved their performance after moving to europe..... kiyotake, hosogai, g sakai, h sakai - get regular playing time in bundesliga but always play like garbage for japan. especially hosogai is overrated here. nagatomo - declined defensively after moving to serie a. kagawa - always disappointing since u-20 team days. okazaki - only good against weaker opponents and it didn't change after going abroad. uchida - defensively improved but his attacking ability was weakened instead. kawashima, yoshida - always a clown. the truth is that japan plays better at world cup with a squad made up mostly of j-league based players. in 2006 and 2014 they failed because they thought "we have players in europe. we can fight against anyone with open soccer." in 2010 they were successful because they tried hard and played as a team. japanese superiority = discipline and work rate.
He's obviously highly exaggerating but I wouldn't discard everything. And 98 players were from a league that was only 5 years old.
Yes, and Japan also played only 4 world cup, one of which was at home. The evidence of what he's suggesting is very, very small. It's based on a single team which by the way had overall a very affordable group. Discipline and work rate have nothing to do with where the players play, besides we all know where the players of the countries who advance the most actually play.
Odd to read that fans and merchandising would be weakening the NT. Here in Germany fans that support their team in any case are celebrated, and wherever the fans are more picky the club officials complain about that. Of course the environment for players must be handled professionally, but to include fans in that is honestly inane. Get the FA to organise training camps that actually help their team's instead their financial bottom line (something many national FAs still don't appear to manage).
Lack of quality euro and s.a. opponents is largely an issue with fifa rankings. There is nothing for them to gain by defeating an asian team, and a lot to lose given how the points work. Even so, confed cup is the only opportunity to play such sides competitively until all of asia starts playing better football
2006 most players were domestic... in fact im pretty sure naka was the only one in ucl. And that was with celtic... hardly world beaters. No offense to them, but spl over all is terrible. Celtic is a great club, but the league as a whole is worse than jleague imo.